Monthly Archives: March 2010

When I saw this TED video I had to share it. He talks about music and what it really means for some people. I post this as a tribute to music, because this is how important it has been to me:

Music is so much to so many different people. If you want to change your mood and fast, music is all you need. If you need to deal with some issues, music is there. I am also very interested in music’s influence on learning, and creating productive and rich atmospheres.

So much of what goes on around us everyday effects us in ways we may not even realize. If we make good music part of what’s around us everyday, good things will come from it.

It’s always good to go back and touch on the importance of music, because I feel like too often we forget. Music is the reason I am able to do what I do each day, and I would be lost right now without it. I hope you enjoyed that video as much as I did.

Since the last update, not a whole lot has changed, except for our anticipation, which is growing more and more each minute.

Any day now we should be getting a call or an email telling us that we can test the site for the first time. Until then, we’re working hard to get as much artist related content(album reviews, performance videos, interviews) as possible, finished and on our blog. We have stacks of CDs and hours of film to edit, so we’re staying busy. It’s all great content! Expect a lot of that coming up this week, along with, hopefully, news of the site being testable.

In the world of real-time updates, and endless barrages of information, it’s more important than ever for companies to engage with their customers. Online marketing is one of the best ways to do this. This means keeping a couple of things in mind.

According to this Hypebot article: Selling to Fans? Think L.I.V.E., Glenn Peoples of Billboard and Brian Peterson of Bandbox recommended on a SXSW panel that “the key to more sales from fans is to think L.I.V.E.”

Limited

Offer products that are limited in time and/or quantity.

Interaction

Interact regularly with the fans.

Value

Add more value or discount the product.

Exclusive

Sell to your core fans first.

So is this really all there is to making more sales? Is this going to work?

There was an article this weekend brought to my attention, about iTunes, that I thought perfectly explained the problems with the platform. The article is called ITunes Music Store. Facelift for a Corrupt Society. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Of course, if you do this research yourself, or you’re an artist, you will or have found the same results, but if that’s not the case, his main points against iTunes are that it’s too expensive, there is poor audio quality, and they take too high of a cut from sales. (horrendous paraphrase..apologies)

Today we had our Beat-Play meeting in Philadelphia with everyone coming in from all the various parts of the country. We had a great meeting.

We talked about marketing, our ad model, customer service and transparency, which is the reason for this blog.

I also gave everyone an update on where we’re at for beta. I talked to Dan, our programmer last night and he said we should be in internal beta by the end of the month.

This is extremely exciting because we will finally get to play around with everything and begin to make tweaks. We figure we’ll play around with it for maybe a month or 2 until we release it for invitation beta.

This is an amazing interview with independent artist Alejandro Velasquez, a guitarist in the band Artefacto. He talks about the struggles for independent artists in Medellin, Colombia, and also about how artists there are organizing in order to make the changes they need to be successful on their own.

I love this interview for a couple of reasons. One is Alejo’s response to my question “How do you promote yourself?” I’ve never had anyone give me his response, and I’ve long felt the same way. He said “make good music.” This should always be first and foremost.

We are an everything or nothing society. We either want everything now, or in our minds, we might as well have nothing.

We are never happy until we have everything we want. This is an important mental factor to be aware of in our society. It can explain a lot of behavior. I believe most people forget about it, probably because they’re guilty of it themselves..even me.

But where does this mentality come from, and what harm, if any, can it do?

Sure, some people may claim that having that mindset only pushes people to do their best all the time, and strive harder for what they want, but is this really true?

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Our blog is dedicated to providing the public with quality music from the independent music community, and to inform people of the broad majority of musicians world-wide with amazing sound, style, inspiration, and overall message. If you would like to have any track removed please email us – info@musicwithoutlabels.com